


how to die

by ephelid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Disabled Character, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 12:56:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15972752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephelid/pseuds/ephelid
Summary: After Nagini's venom spreads into his veins, Snape finds himself blind, mute, deaf, and paralized.How does one keep living when an aching conscience is everything that remains? What to do with a life almost indistinguishable from death?Maybe a nurse in training, used to unusual ways of communication, can be the link between his mind and his body, between him and the world.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A little fic I wrote for the Snape drawing and writing fest. The chapters are pretty short to keep them tumblr friendly, but it was very interesting to go to the essential!
> 
> I hope you'll like it!
> 
> If you like Snape as much as I do, join me at 1800areyousnappin.tumblr.com

When Severus Snape died, he went straight to hell.

It wasn’t a surprise. merely a disappointment. Everything was dark, and silent. His body answered no more. Only the pain was still pulsing in his throat, radiating in his veins. Strange. He’d always thought he’d feel nothing.

He didn’t know for how long he was dead. His joints were aching. Like a pressure coming from the inside of his jaws, his hands, his elbows, his ankles. Like they were shrinking. Probably the rigor mortis. Which meant he was dead for at least six hours.

Really, death was disappointing. No relief, no passage, no deliverance, just another loss, after losing everything. His sense of smell and touch were still functioning. Probably the process of dying took longer than living people thought.

Was it because he killed Dumbledore? Was his broken soul too weak to fight against the weight of his sin, and leave his body? Was he doomed to remain conscient and feel his body rot? Was it his punishment?

He had been a bad man. He never shied away from this fact. He hated himself so much he didn’t try to be someone else he could love. He only tried to erase himself from this earth. To built the world that could have been, should have been, if he wasn’t been born.

This is how he understood he was in hell. For his crimes he was punished, and his torture was to be stuck in the tiniest world that only consisted of him. Locked with himself, with nothing but his conscience, his regrets and memories, no future to look at, no mission to follow, no peer to play a role to. Just forced into the deepest intimacy with the person he hated the most.

A french philosopher once said “hell is other people.” You can trust philosophers to make good sentences and be huge idiots.

How subtile, how elegant. The demons and fires were no match against this form of quiet, delicate torture.

It was at this right moment that he smelled smoke. Fire smoke. Wood burning. If he was still alive, he woçuld have laughed. So it was real. The hellfire. It was real. Like in childish nightmares and unimaginative paintings.

Dying without losing conscience and burning. For eternity.

Well. So be it. He knew he deserved it.

He could feel the fire coming closer. The feel on his cheek grown from heat to burn. The smoke became more thick.

A breeze of fresh air against his face, a tightness pressing his whole body, like the embrace of two powerful arms, and finally, his soul slipped outside of his body. Finally, Death took him away with her.

She took him away to heaven.

He felt a salty breeze on his face. The warmth of sun. He opened his eyes on a vision of paradise. He walked barefoot in the sand, to the sea. The Dark Mark on his forearm had disappeared. He smiled.

He was free. He was alive. And he was the only one who knew it. Severus Snape, declared dead, dead to the world, had escaped, had escaped war, had escaped the world, even escaped hell, and no one knew.

He woke up painfully, the shreds of the ethereal vision clinging to his aching consciousness. He needed a moment to realize it was just a dream.

Lady death took him in her comforting embrace and rejected him. Well. He never had been lucky with women.

He could thank her nonetheless. Lady Death had the courtesy to abandon him on a softer, fluffier ground. The ache in his joints, the pressure from inside his body, was slowly vanishing. He couldn’t smell the smoke no more. The threatening heat was gone. The place was pretty fresh.

He felt a piercing pain in his stomach, as if something was drilling inside his tender flesh. An old reflex moved the memory of his arm to feel it with his hand. He almost felt his body moving - his arm rising, a little, before nature took back its right and immobilized it.

Probably an illusion caused by decay. Rigor mortis probably left its place to decomposition. Soon, flies and insects would start to make their way in him. This piercing pain in his stomach was the dedicated flies laying their offspring in his rotting meat. He was probably stinking like crazy but now.

But he smelled a breeze of wild flowers. Chamomilla and mud, and iced water.

He wondered if he has been buried in a landfill.

A hand touched his hand. Softly. Severus startled, felt a disgust rising, walking through him, disappearing. The touch was precise, attentive.

The gentle hand proceed to delicately move his fingers, one by one. Severus could feel his joints protesting, then relaxing. Then it mobilized his wrist. Then the fingers of his other hand. The other wrist. Then the elbows. His neck, his feet, his knees.

Finally it stopped on his forearm, where his dark mark had imprinted his skin. The pressure of a finger on his flesh, where he knew the head of the snake was. Then a ticklish sensation, when the finger ran on his skin. Softly, calmly, but this firm and decided moves, as if it was trying to read it, to read into his deepest sin, his deepest regret, and the lights scars of the nights he was cutting himself.

He never believed in God, even less in guardian angels. His life made sure he’d never do. But as he felt the race of the finger between his wrist and his elbow, three times, drawing complicated lines, an ancient spell, an old witchcraft, a sophisticated sigil, he found himself hoping, craving for a benevolent will by his side, no matter what it was.

The ticklish dance on his forearm reached the inside elbow, stopped, came back to the wrist, and started again. Slower, with a deeper pressure. Insisting. Severus realized the figures it was drawing were oddly familiar.

It was letters. The mysterious entity wasn’t reading anything on his skin, neither it was blessing or healing him. It was writing.

“Can you feel me?”

Severus waved his fingers, and the touch vanished. He left something sliding under his left index. He brushed on the surface, recognized the smoothness and warmth of a flesh. “Yes”, he wrote on it.

The touch on his forearm again, “Are you in pain?”

He just had the time to draw a “y” when the entity wrote again : “Where?”

He hesitated. “Everything.”

“Everywhere?”

“No. Everything is in pain.”

Severus waited. No answer. He thought the presence was gone when it wrote back:

“I will take care of you.”

“Who are you?” he asked

“A friend.”

“Are you dead too?”

He waited a longer time before it answered. This time, it was really gone. When he felt the touch again, he startled.

“None of us are dead.”

He felt the flesh under his left finger, waiting. He needed a moment before writing.

“I cannot see.”

“You are blind.”

“I cannot hear.”

“You are deaf.”

“I cannot speak.”

“You are mute.”

“I cannot move.”

“You’re partially paralyzed. The snake’s venom poisoned your whole body.”

He felt the person slipping their forearm under his finger again, but this time, he took it off. He felt a hand pressing gently his forearm, his cheek, then nothing. It was a goodbye. The person had left.

If he could have laughed, he would have. It was the exact contrary of what he had dreamt about.

Severus Snape never escaped, Severus Snape was alive, he was his own prisonner, and everybody knew but him.


	2. Chapter 2

Death smelled like chamomilla, mud and iced water.

She came to visit him frequently. Maybe everyday. Maybe twice a day. He was unable to tell. He was unable to differentiate awakeness from sleep. He knew he had fell asleep, many times, deep, dreamless sleeps. He wishes he could dream. See something, hear something, feeling his body moving, even if it was just an illusion.

Sometimes he was woken up by a step so heavy that he could feel the vibrations into his bones. Sometimes he smelled the scent of a spicy aftershave, the kind that was worn by youngsters who didn’t shave for long. Sometimes he felt the brush of a spell twirling around his body, from his feet to his hair, and he recognized the Bathing spell used in hospitals.

“You’re in a special aisle of Mt Mungo,” confirmed Death, writing on his forearm. “You’re a special case.”

A special case, yes, the only person who survived the spread of the venom directly inside his veins. Ironically, Nagini’s greed had saved him. She attacked his neck, his blood pressure dropped quickly, the poison slowed down into his muscles, paralyzed him, but didn’t have the time to attack his vital organs.

Then Death came to him.

“I was at the top of the astronomy tower, in the heat of the battle, when I saw an eerie light in the distance.”

Severus Snape was dying alone, mourned by no one, after he gave away everything, after he gave away his own memories, his own tears, when Fawkes followed the trail of his loyalty and cried for him.

“I found you more dead than alive. I didn’t know what you were doing here. I just understood you’ve been loyal to Dumbledore. Fawkes testified it. So I took the dead body of a Death Eater outside, laid him against you, put your wand into his hand, and I took you away with me, asking Fawkes to set the shrieking shack on fire.”

It was the smoke he had smelled, the heat he had felt. The fire was actually the hell of someone else.

“I took care of you four days, hidden in my dad’s basement, until your name was cleared. I couldn’t do a lot. I did nothing better than keeping you alive, I’m afraid. I gave you Sweet Dreams potions.”

OK. So when he has seen heaven between the arms of Death, he had thought he had been redeemed, but in fact he was just high.

“When I’ve been sure you wouldn’t risk anything, that you wouldn’t be put in Azkaban, I revealed you were still alive and brought you here. This is where it becomes a bit embarrassing.”

Severus waved his fingers. Death slipped her forearm under his left index and he wrote on the fresh flesh:

“Embarrassing? How?”

“You were dead. You had been celebrated. Buried as a hero. You had national funerals.”

“How touching.”

“Then I show up and reveal they were crying over the calcined body of Dolohov the whole time.”

The piercing pain in his stomach radiated when his body tried to laugh.

“Embarrassing, indeed,” he wrote.

“At the beginning, everyone cheered. Professor McGonagall cried. They had so much to tell you. So much to hear from you. And…”

“… and I’m nothing but a cumbersome body that refuses to die. I get it.”

So Minerva cried? He felt a strange satisfaction. She might feel very guilty for distrusting who turned out to still be her friend. This was the kind of thing gryffindors couldn’t bear. He didn’t feel sorry for her in the slightest.

“I can feel presences around me sometimes. One has a very heavy step.”

“She’s the nurse. She’s very kind.”

The nurse. Of course. It was unlikely that anyone would visit this public embarrassment of a body.

“Another one smells like spicy aftershave.”

“This is Harry Potter.”

It wasn’t an answer he expected, even if, he realized, he should have.

“What does he want?”

“He wants to talk. He comes in and talk to you.”

“Doesn’t he know I’m deaf?”

“He knows. That’s why. He has a lot to say that he doesn’t want you to hear.”

“It makes no sense.”

“It makes sense to him.”

His finger danced over Death’s flesh. He was going to hate himself for what he was about to ask, but a morbid curiosity pushed him to seek deeper, like he couldn’t help himself to touch an open wound.

“Anyone else? Do I receive visitors I can’t feel?”

“No.”

His stomach ached when he snickered.

“Professor Mcgonagall used to come at the beginning,” Death explained. “But I don’t think she beared seeing you like this. And she’s a very busy woman.”

“This is very generous of you to say that.”

Wait. Death called her “professor”?

The forearm slipped under his finger as soon as he moved it. “Are you a student?”

“I used to be a student in Hogwarts. Now i’m starting my apprenticeship here.”

“You said you were at the battle.”

“I was.”

“You brought me here four days after my faked death. I’m here around a week, I guess. You can’t have graduated this quickly.”

“You are here for eight months and two weeks.”

The information struggled to make its way into his mind, but he wouldn’t have survived all these years if he wasn’t quick to conclusion.

“Entertaining potion,” he wrote.

“Indeed. We feed you and give you potions through the stomach tube. Maybe you can feel it, like a piercing pain? You can’t feel hunger or thirst. You can’t feel the passage of time. You don’t get bored. This is the only way we found for you to not sink into madness. But I think you deserve better. This is why I claimed you as my study project.”

“What an honour.”

“I’m studying unconventional communications. This is amazing how you can still express irony and sarcasm in writing only. I think this is a good sign for your mental health.”

“Glad to amaze you.”

“You see? This is exactly what I’m talking about! I’m really happy.”

Then Severus knew exactly which student she was. Intuitive enough to follow an eerie light, talented enough to brew Sweet Dreams potions, compassionate enough to give them to a dying man, and strange enough to get excited over his bitterness.

She probably mistook his silence for a sulk, because she wrote without being invited:

“I think I can bring your hearing back.”

He had been too taken aback to think about a real sarcastic answer. “I haven’t missed your habit to jump from a subject to another,” he wrote on her flesh, even though it was a lie.

“The surgeon can operate tomorrow. I gave him instruction. But I need your authorisation.”

She slipped a pen in his hand and a sheet of paper under his wrist, and he signed mindlessly. He thought that his elegant handwriting would look like a horrible mush and he childishly felt annoyed.

The paper and the pen were taken back, and she wrote on his flesh : “Thank you, professor Snape.”

“You’re welcome. Butcher me as you please. Can’t be worse.”

He felt the light pressure on his cheek, which was the sign of goodbye. He waved his fingers, and she put her own forearm for him to write:

“Thank you, Miss Lovegood.”

A friendly pressure on his hand, a touch on his cheek, and Luna was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

Luna’s idea was so simple it reached genius.

She got the idea the very first day she visited him, when she gently moved and massaged Severus’ abandoned body. She realized his mobility was restricted because Nagini’s venom, slowed down in his body, attacked the cartilages and the surface of the bones. The most fragile articulations, the fingers, the wrist and ankles, had started to fuse together.

Severus could no longer hear because in his middle ear, the three tiny bones responsible for transmitting sound turned into one unique, solid mass of calcium.

Luna decided to remove it. Entirely. And came up with the simplest solution.

“A skelegro potion?” wrote Snape in the air. “Really?”

“Well, it worked, right?” said Luna. She was pouring water in a big recipient, judging by the sound. The typical ruffling sound of flowers arranged in a vase. The smell of wild flower and iced water was a bouquet that Luna put everyday on his bedside, even though he couldn’t see it.

“I was pretty confident about it,” she pursued, over a strange sound, like she was searching through a bag of walnut shells. “I was hoping for the secondary effect about your mobility. After all, the skelegro potion not only grow back bones, but also the cartilage. It didn’t entirely fixed your pinna, though. You still look like a sad goblin.”

“I’ve always looked like a sad goblin,” wrote Snape. He heard the crackling of the fire letters hanging in the air. Luna’s wand was very supple, and a bit longer that his own. He wasn’t used to it yet.

“I’m trying to built a re-education program. Your spine is deformed. So are many fragile bones. If you tried to walk now, you’d break your ankles.”

“Where would you want me to go anyway.”

His world had left the limits of his own skin to grow to the wall of his room. It was already a relief.

“I told the nurse that she can talk to you now.”

Well. The relief had been brief.

“She will also bring your meal. Your pharynx allows the passage of solid food, now. We no longer need to feed you through the tube. What would you like to read?” She emptied the bag of walnut shells over his bed. Snape felt rectangle plastic boxes, that fit in his palm. “I’d like to talk about something else than your health. Let’s talk literature.”

“It may have escaped your notice, Miss Lovegood, but I’m blind.”

“Wow, even the crackling of the fire letters sounded sarcastic. Did you hear that? Amazing!” Snape heard the friction of a quilt on paper. Luna was taking notes. “I brought audio books. This is a muggle thing.” She slided a rectangular object in his hand. “This is called ‘a walkman’, but don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere. Here, you press ‘play’… can you feel the symbol? You take a tape and… I forgot the batteries. It’s been a long time I haven’t used muggle technology.” She took her wand back. “I’ll be back. I won’t be long.”

She stormed out of the room, leaving behind her nothing but the scent of wild flowers and a dozen of audio tapes that fell off the bed anytime Severus made a move. He sighed, leaning his head against the pillow. He agreed to her idea to stop giving him Entertainment Potions, mostly because he didn’t want to admit he was getting bored as soon as she was gone.

When he hear a step by the door, Severus closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. She’d never know he was waiting for her.

The door opened without knocking, and Severus smelled a spicy aftershave.

“Good evening, professor,” said Harry Potter.

Snape wondered if Harry knew he could hear. An instinct polished through years of spying whispered him to stay still.

“This is funny, right? I still call you professor. I’ve tried other things. Sir, Mister Snape. Half Blood Prince. Damn, I even tried your first name. Nothing fits.”

This was how Snape knew for sure Harry had no idea he could hear.

“Minerva came to see me yesterday after my auror training.”

So he was still “professor” but McGonagall was “Minerva”. Curious.

“She was carrying a box. I think I knew what was in. No, I did not. But when she explained, I knew it would happen. I just hoped it would happen.. later. When you’ll feel better, or when you’ll die. Preferably when you’ll die.”

Ho. Thanks.

“The papers are signed. Minerva is your legal tutor. She sold your house at Spinner’s End. Minerva saved all your personal belonging, of course. It’s stored at Hogwarts. I don’t understand why. She should sell everything. It’s not like you’d need anything now.”

Harry paused. A ruffling sound. He was touching the flowers. Unable to stand still, just like when he was a child.

“I hate you so much.”

His voice was calm, breathy. There was like a sadness, a regret in this tone. No anger, no bitterness.

“The box was filled with my mother’s stuff. I guess. Girly things. Things a teenager in a 70’s would have. Little things, of little value. The kind you don’t reclaim back after a break up even though…I don’t know what these objects mean. I don’t know what this feather mean. I don’t know what this collar mean. This fair ticket. How old were you? These photos. Who does this cat belong to? This beautiful garden, covered with flowers, this is not yours, I think it’s my grandparents’, but this blurry silhouette in the back, I think it’s your mother. Eileen Prince.”

I know what my mother’s name is, dumbass, he thought, when he realized Harry called her Prince, not Snape.

“If only you were dead…” he started, hesitant. He cleared his throat. “If you were dead, this box would be a treasure. A mystery. But you’re here, alive, and this box is a robbery. A secret. A secret i’m not part of. I received so little from my mother, and you’re holding the most of it.”

A scraping noise on the floor. Harry had took the visitor’s chair, and was sitting next to him.

“Everyone think I’m a hero. It’s not true. A hero doesn’t need another hero, and I need one. Even a dead one. Dead people always took more place in my life than living ones. Dumbledore manipulated me. My father and Sirius were rather ambiguous, now I know thanks to you.” He sounded openly sarcastic. “Remus disappointed me… And… When I thought you were dead… when we all thought you were dead… You were a hero. More than a hero. A martyr. All I felt about you was admiration and guilt. It was simple. It was only grieving. It was only a story of gratefulness and forgiveness.

“But four days after, you’re brought here. Alive. And look at you. Look how miserable you are. This is someone’s fault. This is everyone’s fault. We’re no longer guilty for what we haven’t done, but for what we’re doing now. This is way too real. You are way too real. A hero doesn’t look like this. You look like a victim. You look like our victim.”

Rustle sounds, steps. Harry had stood up, but was staying in the room. He remained silent for a moment.

“You are our guilt and as long as you’re alive, the guilt is alive with you.”

His voice sounded more distant, as if he was turning his back on him. Severus understood there was a window in the room, and Harry was staring at it.

“I hate you, and I hate myself for this. The forgiveness I need is stuck is this silent body.”

A ruffle of fabric. Harry was turning to him.

“Professor Snape, can you save me one last time?”

He walked to him. Took the audio tapes off his bed. Pilled them neatly on the bedside. One, two. He kept the third one in his hand. Then a curious sound, like a friction between two fabrics. That grew. Became more clear. Harry Potter was laughing, a joyless laughter.

“Audio books?” He laughed openly, unbridled. “You can hear me, right? You can hear me.”

Severus opened his eyes in response. Without turning his head to him, without making a move.

“It’s always the same, right?” Harry went on picking and piling up the tapes. “Always the same.”

He took the walkman off his hand, and pulled up his blanket up to his shoulders.

“Please.”

A light touch on his cheek, a fatherly kiss on his forehead.

“Die.”


	4. Chapter 4

Death lies in the most unexpected places. In a delay. In a distraction. In a careful plan. In a friend’s absence. In the wrong word at the wrong moment.

Severus had always been ready to die. Ready to turn the corner and bump into death. He had always considered death like an awkward social situation. Unpleasant, unexpected, but you cannot live your whole life avoiding it.

He never thought he’d have to seek out for her. To hunt her down. To peruse the multiple places she was hiding, and find the specific point, the specific shadow, that was meant for him.

Severus Snape could chose his own death. Chose the way he’d leave. He felt like it was the first time he had a real choice.

When Luna came back with the batteries, she didn’t know she was coming back to a dead man.

Sure, he was breathing, he was writing, and during a second, she was sure he flashed a smile. But he’s already dying, the man who just found the place death is waiting for him.

She felt immediately something had changed. She applied her lessons, she tried to make him talk, to discreetly brush any subject that usually interested him to see which one he’d hook on.

She felt genuine surprise, when the middle of a sentence, he gently took her hand. He waved her wand in the air : “Luna,” he started, and it was the first time he called her by her first name, “if anything happened to me soon, would it be damageable to your studies?”

She blinked, taken aback. “No, it wouldn’t. My term paper is almost complete. I submit it in two weeks. But nothing will happen to you, professor. You’re getting better and better every passing day.”

He pressed her hand, in a friendly gesture, and half a smile spread on the half paralyzed face. “I need you to do something for me.”

 

 

February the 5th, nine months after his funerals, Severus Snape died.

The news didn’t make the front pages. After all, it already did. It wasn’t a real news. Severus Snape had done was expected from him. As usual.

Severus Snape freed the wizarding world in his life, and his death freed the ones who fought for him. He freed Mcgonagall of the responsibilities towards him she didn’t want, and freed Harry Potter’s words.

The boy who lived had so much to say to the man who died that the whole world had not enough ears. He contacted different newspapers to give short interviews, only talking about a great man called Snape. He wrote an open letter to the dead man, an elegy, an apology, a dithyramb so touching and genuine that many families bereaved by the war sobbed in secret.

He wrote letters to him, personal letters that he never made public. No one knew every letter opened with “hey asshole” and were closed with “fuck you.”

Harry Potter could glorified the hero who saved him and insult the man he hated, at last.

He attached these letters to an owl, and released it, for the ultimate journey, the longest journey that took one second, the journey from life to death. The owl would live his house, leave the town, leave the country, cross the sea, fight cold and harsh winds, until she reached another world, another horizon thickened with the silhouette of Iceland. Then the owl would turn to the port city of Grindavik, fly past it, to an isolated house perched on a soft hill, and drop the letter to the threshold of Perceval Prince.

The stranger man arrived in town early february. He didn’t speak a word of icelandic. He didn’t speak a word at all. He was mute, probably because of the large wound across his throat, that had left an ugly reddish scar. He was walking with a limp, leaning on a black cane. Children and impressionable adults would stare at him. Judging by his stern face and harsh manners, he’d take offense if he ever caught the blend of horror and pity in the eyes of his neighbors. But he couldn’t see them. He couldn’t see at all.

No one knew how he could walk with such confidence without bumping against anyone of anything. He dodged every passer by, every car, every bike, when he was going town for his weekly purchases, a list in his hand that he slammed on the grocery countertop, without a sign, without a smile.

No one knew who he was. No one knew where he came from. No one knew when the rumours started. Maybe it was his mere presence, the way he filled more space than his body, this magical aura around him. Kids sweared they saw him drawing a wand out of his cane. No one knew if they were imagining things.

No one knew who has been the first mother who asked him to heal her dying child. No one knew how the child survived. Neither the other ones who followed. Neither the senile elderly people who started to feel better after taking his obscure beverages. No one asked.

They paid his silence with their own. He was a secret, and secret’s power leaks through words.

Silence was a kingdom and he was reigning on it. He was able to cure people who couldn’t put a word on their pain, too young, too old, too hurt. His unseeing eyes could puncture a soul and follow the trail of pain.

Some people said he was mute because he only knew the language of pain.

There was cautious steps in some streets, leaned heads whispering in café, curious notes in the letterbox of despairing, sybiline messages on the walls. The bat is blind so the bat can see. Follow the owls. The raven only talk to the dove.

The dove was the nickname they found for his friend. His assistant. His daughter. No one knew. A blonde woman, graceful and sweet, with unusual manners. She was speaking english and a clumsy icelandic but she was understood and understood anyone.

Some people said it was so easy because she knew the language of relief.

Children adored her. Parents adored her. Everyone adored her. She adored the man. No one knew if he adored anything.

He looked like he had no appetite. He never asked for money. Not that his services were free. No one ever dared paying him a visit with empty hands. A home cooked meal, still steaming. A new pair of shoes. A fluffy blanket. A stere of wood. A box of jars. Depending on his patients’ means. He accepted everything.

He wasn’t nice, he wasn’t friendly, and no one liked him, but everyone respected him, understood his need for privacy.

Some tender hearts worried he might feel lonely. But the mailman said that sometimes, beside his adorable assistant, he received english speaking people. Especially a red haired couple, who looked older than him. More rarely, a young man, around his assistant’’s age, wearing glasses and scar, whose black hair spiked up under the harsh marine winds. He always looked like he just argued with the man, and always looked like it was the last time he’d pay a visit, but everytime, he came back.

He came back alone, he came back with a beautiful ginger woman, with a baby, with two, with three, and the little girl was starting to trotter around when the red hair couple came for an obviously unexpected visit. The red hair man looked particularly excited. The mailman said he watched him climbing the soft hill, waving his arms, repeating excitedly : “Light! Muggles found a way to cure eyes with light! Concentrated light! As thin as a shadow! They are amazing!” English people were very strange.

Perceval Prince would be seen later in town with a bandage on his eyes. Everyone saluted him. No one questioned him. He looked busy, in a kind of hurry. He was walking to the sea.

When he reached the shore, he let the salty breeze bathe his face. He left his shoes and the cold sand bit his toes. He walked barefoot to the sea, the wind whirling his woolen cape behind him.

He unwrapped his bandages, blinked under the shy, palid sun. The seagulls were flying high over the slate blue sea, screaming cryptic messages. A boat was sailing, its mast tickling the horizon. At the far end of the beach, a family was fooling around in the rock, holding the hand of a little boy who would never been born without his help. Behind them, isolated on a soft hill, the frail smoke of his own chimney, his own house, welcoming and warm.

He rolled up his sleeve. The dark mark on his forearm had disappeared. The scar had not pained him for eleven years.

When Severus Snape died he went straight to hell, climbed out of it, faced his own life, heard his own judgement, and built his own redemption, his own forgiveness, his own paradize.


End file.
